Sunday, June 23, 2013

d20 Suppressive Fire

Nonexistent is a word I find fitting to describe it. I've been looking for d20 rules that work with suppressing fire and have found none. I've searched d20 Modern SDR and found no rules addressing suppressing fire. The word suppress actually appears a few times, one as in silencer for a gun and the others in the context of magic use.

D20 is very good at resolving to hit situations. Did you hit your target? Yes - No. It is very inefficient at solving "not hit" situations. Particularly massive fire "not hit" situations. Suppressive fire is one of them. The idea of suppressive fire is not to hit someone. After all they're all hiding from your bursts, right? But how do you solve the odds of the enemy sticking his head out just as your Gatling swings around? Or how good is your burst that it's close enough to keep the enemy pinned.

Dice pool mechanics have a way to solve this, but they're fuzzy. Not that I dislike them, I really enjoy playing dice pool games, but they lack that crunchiness I'm looking for. I don't want too many tables, preferably none. One or two die rolls to determine outcome and that's it. I do want some detail as to what is going on. I find d20 to be too "binary" if you will, its either hit or miss, with no in between.

As a player or game designer do you know a modern or futuristic game that handles massive fire well?